I don’t really see the why for your assertions in your post here. For example:
It’s not nice to be in a community that constantly hints that you might just not be good enough and that you can’t get good enough.
Ok, it’s not nice. Its understandable that many people don’t want to think they’re not good enough. But if they truly are not good enough then the effort they spend towards solving alignment in a way they can’t contribute towards doesn’t help solving alignment. The niceness of the situation has little bearing on how effective the protocols are.
If we want to actually accomplish anything, we need to encourage people to make bigger bets, and to stop stacking up credentials so that fellow EAs think they have a chance
Ok, this is a notion, maybe it’s right, maybe it’s not, I’m just not getting much from this post telling me why it’s right.
Upvoted. I think these are legitimate critiques of my post. I feel strongly that most people can improve significantly more than anticipated. This is largely because most people do not try very hard to self improve.
To be more specific, I think that EAs are severely overconfident in our ability to gauge people’s potential, and that we often say things that create a sort of… memetic vibe that encourages this thinking.
I think in general having memes that lead to incorrect object level beliefs is bad, and there’s a case to be made that how EAs talk about people contributes to this.
I don’t really see the why for your assertions in your post here. For example:
Ok, it’s not nice. Its understandable that many people don’t want to think they’re not good enough. But if they truly are not good enough then the effort they spend towards solving alignment in a way they can’t contribute towards doesn’t help solving alignment. The niceness of the situation has little bearing on how effective the protocols are.
Ok, this is a notion, maybe it’s right, maybe it’s not, I’m just not getting much from this post telling me why it’s right.
Upvoted. I think these are legitimate critiques of my post. I feel strongly that most people can improve significantly more than anticipated. This is largely because most people do not try very hard to self improve.
To be more specific, I think that EAs are severely overconfident in our ability to gauge people’s potential, and that we often say things that create a sort of… memetic vibe that encourages this thinking.
I think in general having memes that lead to incorrect object level beliefs is bad, and there’s a case to be made that how EAs talk about people contributes to this.